Internet Privacy Funded by Spooks: A Brief history of the Broadcasting Board of Governors

Yasha Levine reports on the PandoDaily website on how the U.S. Government has and continues to fund internet tools that provide anonymity and privacy such as Tor, CryptoCat and Open Whisper Systems.

The article provides an interesting insight into the activities and history of the blandly named Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which has its origins in the cold war, and the way money passes through BBG controlled Radio Free Asia and the stations Open Technology Fund, to groups and individuals developing various privacy technologies.

Although the author questions whether privacy activists should be accepting funding from the US Government, a probably more important question is why the US Government would want provide funding to organisations and individuals to develop technology that provides protection from surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK’s GCHQ etc. This is a question very rarely discussed by privacy campaigners or journalists, but one that perhaps should be asked more often?